


ever after

by daisylincs



Series: Daisy Johnson Appreciation Week 2020 [3]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Agents of SHIELD Finale, Daisy Johnson Appreciation Week 2020, Emotional, Episode Tag: s07e13 What We're Fighting For, F/M, Family, Hopeful Ending, Introspection, Phil Coulson's Letter, Post-Finale, Skye | Daisy Johnson-centric, Very very emotional, like you wouldn't believe how emotional I made myself writing this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:01:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26236072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daisylincs/pseuds/daisylincs
Summary: Happy ending. Now there was something Daisy had never thought she would see for herself, let alone actively experience.And yet here she was.(Reflections on Daisy Johnson’s life post-finale.)
Relationships: Background Skye | Daisy Johnson/Daniel Sousa, Skye | Daisy Johnson & Agents of SHIELD Team
Series: Daisy Johnson Appreciation Week 2020 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1886254
Comments: 18
Kudos: 43





	ever after

**Author's Note:**

> This fic. Oh, my gosh, this fic. It's written for the final day of Daisy Johnson Appreciation Week 2020 - the free day. And for some reason I just… couldn’t finish it, because my brain decided to associate finishing it with really, truly letting go of AoS, and I couldn’t bring myself to do that just yet. So I kept seeing the tiniest errors in this, and agonising over the ending, and generally giving myself a super-hard time over the editing - until I realised, you know what, I should take my own advice. (You’ll see what I mean.) 
> 
> This fic is a study in emotion above everything else - because the way Chloe expressed the bittersweetness of that last scene in the bar gave me _all_ of the feelings. She’s just an _incredible_ actress, truly, and we’ve been so lucky to have her gracing our screens.
> 
> This is my tribute to the Agents of SHIELD finale, to Chloe, to Daisy - my way of saying, from the bottom of my heart, thank you so, _so_ much. 💜

Happy ending. Now there was something Daisy had never thought she would see for herself, let alone actively experience.

She had daydreamed about it, sure - huddled under frayed, too-small blankets at the orphanage after being sent back from the latest foster homes, then again years later on particularly cold nights in her van, and even when she was with SHIELD and dating Lincoln, and things were good.

But even then, those scenarios she had dreamed up had been just that - dreams. She had never imagined any of them becoming real, because she just wasn’t the kind of person who _got_ a happy ending. Life had proved that, over and over.

And yet here she was.

Sitting there in the bar, empty stools where her friends had been just seconds ago, she realised she hadn’t been prepared - she had always focused on the _happy,_ and never imagined the _ending_ part of it. 

Because this was an ending, no matter how happy it might be. There would be no more casual chats in the hallways of the Zephyr, no more jokes and good-natured ribbings after debriefings, no more dinners with the whole group on Saturday evenings.

The year had passed in a flurry of preparations for going out to space, play-dates with Alya Fitzsimmons, and liaisons with Mack and SHIELD to get everything sorted out - and what with all the chaos of it, there hadn’t really been time for it to sink in that it was all really over.

But now, surrounded by the overwhelming _emptiness_ of the speakeasy without her friends in it, the realisation that she would only ever see them all like this, in a virtual projection - it _hurt._

And it was overwhelmingly clear that this really was an ending. It was never going to be the same again.

Mack, Jemma, Fitz, even May - they all said this was a good thing, something that had been on the horizon for a while now. 

And the thing was, a part of Daisy agreed. It was good that they all got to live out their lives - Fitz and Jemma with Alya, May at the Academy, Mack leading SHIELD with Elena as his top agent, Coulson seeing the world, Deke being a rock-god-slash-SHIELD-director in the alternate timeline, and her leading this new venture of S.W.O.R.D. with her sister and her boyfriend by her side. It all worked out, neat as the final piece slotting into a puzzle that had been building for years. 

But it also meant that, slowly but surely, they would grow apart. They couldn’t share everything anymore, and it would gradually become more and more awkward, until they barely knew each other anymore.

And that _terrified_ her. She had waited her whole life to find these people, to really, truly belong - and now there was a very good chance that they were going to fade out of her life completely.

It wasn’t that she _wasn’t_ happy in the life she had chosen for herself - far from it. She had always been built for adventure, for exploring the unknown and helping out wherever she saw trouble. And Daniel was her rock; the person who would pick her up after a long day of running into walls, as he put it; the person she could go to when it all got too much for her. 

It suited her, this leadership of S.W.O.R.D. It really did. 

It was just that, until today, it hadn’t really sunk in what she was giving up to have it.

 _Happy ending._

Why had she never realised that in order to have the happy, she first had to go through the ending? 

She closed her eyes, drawing in a quick, shaky breath - and time seemed to slow as her mind hooked on a memory, caught, and held.

Words spiralled in front of her eyes, as clear as though she had the letter right in front of her, Coulson’s handwriting stretching across the page, small and neat.

 _Don’t think of this as an ending, Daisy._

But how couldn’t she? Everything about this _was_ an ending, a loss.

 _One book might be closing, but another one is just opening._

She knew that. She even _liked_ her new book. She just wasn’t _ready_ to let go of the old one.

_I know what you’re thinking. You don’t want to let go. But you have to listen to me. Or, well, read me, I guess._

Dork. He had always been a dork, but he knew her _incredibly_ well.

 _Daisy, remember this. No matter what happens, you will always have your people. And I know it might seem hard, but I need you to hold on to that: no matter how crazy things get, you will_ always have each other. 

Would they, though?

 _You_ will. _Because you are a_ family. _And the thing about a family is… you are like branches on a tree. You may spread and grow in different directions, but your roots remain as one._

_Always._

Daisy could feel something almost like tears prickling at her eyelids as she opened her eyes - but Coulson was right, wasn’t he? It was almost two years ago that he had written her this letter, and it was almost more significant now.

 _Branches on a tree._ That really was a lovely way of seeing it. Because the bonds they had made - they went deeper than just how many times they saw each other every year. They were their _roots,_ parts of themselves that they carried deep inside forevermore, parts that would continue to define them for the rest of their lives.

This was the ending of one book, maybe. But like Coulson had said, it was the beginning of another one.

And the thing was - the new book could only be there _because_ of what had happened in the previous one. Even though it might not be written in big bold letters across the front cover, the bonds they had made in the old book of their lives were etched into the very pages of the new one.

And pages… pages were what made a book, weren’t they? 

Daisy took a last long look around the bar, relishing the last fragments of this moment that had stretched for so much longer in her mind. She felt… sadness, distinctly, because it _was_ still an ending, despite everything. 

But she also felt, and overwhelmingly so - _acceptance._

Her family, her roots, would never leave her. They would be a part of her for the rest of her life. 

And she _would_ see them again, because that was the other great thing about roots - they _stayed._

Next time, she would just have to see how much their branches had grown.

Almost smiling at the thought, Daisy raised her hand to her head and disconnected Fitz’s device, blinking slowly as the Koenig bar melted away around her.

And then she was back on Z3, bathed in the orangey-yellow light of a flickering nebula filtering through from the cockpit.

Daniel glanced up from the book he was reading, meeting her gaze with slightly raised eyebrows. “They’re good?”

There was so much she could have answered to that question, so much she could have said about how she still wasn’t truly ready to let this be her reality.

But Coulson’s signature at the end of his letter - the way he had signed himself simply, _love you_ \- flashed into her mind, and she knew that she didn’t have to say any of that.

She _was_ ready, because she didn’t _have_ to let go. 

Family was forever, after all. 

So Daisy smiled. “They’re good.”


End file.
